Once seen as an esoteric, overly intellectual, and atheistic quasi-religious philosophy, Vedanta now has a solid spiritual following in the west. Though not as prevalent as Zen or Buddhism, a dozen or more centers have sprung up in the United States since Swami Vivekananda's daring and rocky 1893 visit. One system, Shankara's Advaita Vedanta, has even found a niche in comparative philosophy circles. But the most prevalent...
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Torwesten has put together a survey of Vedanta along more or less historical lines. The first half of the book treats the teachings of the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita; the second half looks at Shankara's non-dualism, the swing back to theism in Ramanuja, and then the more recent developments of Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, Aurobindo, and Ramana Maharshi. This is a survey rather than strictly speaking an introduction; in...
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Overall, an excellent historical summation of Vedanta. Torwesten attempts to synthesize the various philosophies of Vedanta (especially Bhakta and Jnana yogas), and to reconcile the austere and intellectually dry views of Adi Shankaracharya with the broader views of Sri Ramakrishna and other Vedantic sages with similar or more "liberal" viewpoints, and does a pretty fair job of it.
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